Business is blooming at Mary’s
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“My mother started it about mid-70s,” said Beth Hamby Jacobs, Mary’s daughter and sales manager for the business. “And we’ve just grown from there.”
Mary’s, located at 202 Meiser Ln., is now a sprawling collection of around 45 greenhouses, but had somewhat humble beginnings, according to Jacobs.
“We started with two little greenhouses up here in the back yard,” she said, noting her mother Mary didn’t really have any big plans for it at first. “She just started it kind of as a hobby house.”
Though Jacobs said she still finds growing things fulfilling, the greenhouse is now much more a business than a hobby.
“It’s hard work,” she said. “I don’t necessarily like that part of it. But I grew up with this, so I know it.”
But the work still has it’s attractions.
“Plants don’t talk back to you,” Jacobs said with a laugh. “It’s rewarding, I guess, to go out there and see all that pretty stuff and know that you did that.”
Mary’s is still very much a family concern, with the children of Mary, for which the greenhouse is named, and Joe Hamby running the operation now that Mary has pretty much retired from the business. Beth Hamby Jacobs, along with her older brother Michael Hamby, operations manager, and his wife, Beth Hamby, now run the greenhouse.
“The three of us pretty much oversee the day-to-day operations,” Jacobs said.
Jacobs said her oldest brother, Joe Hamby, Jr., works at Ben Lomand, but his wife Charlotte works part-time at the greenhouse during the busy season. Younger brother, Gary Hamby, also works full-time at the greenhouse and does a lot of the driving.
“It’s definitely still a family business,” Jacobs said.
These days, Mary’s has become primarily a wholesale business, according to Jacobs, but still maintains a retail presence in the community.
“We’re probably 85 percent wholesale and 15 percent retail,” Jacobs said.
The wholesale arm of the business covers a pretty wide territory.
“All over the U.S.,” Jacobs said. “We ship out a lot of stuff during the busy season.”
Jacobs said it would be hard to say how many varieties of plants the greenhouse sells. Though she estimates there are probably only 300 or so different species of plants, each of those may feature many different varieties.
“For instance, you have columbine,” she said. “There’s 15 kinds of columbine. So when you add up all the varieties of all the different plants, there’s no telling how many. A lot.”
The busy season, not surprisingly, is in the spring, March, April and May, according to Jacobs, though the business has a second, but much less hectic, busy season in the fall, September, October and November.
“We sell a lot of perennial items during the fall,” she said, noting perennials are one of the biggest sellers, among others.
“Herbs are a big thing these days,” she said. “A lot of people are going organic. Like rosemary, basil, lavenders, all kinds of lavenders, creeping thyme, mints, chives. You know, a lot of people like to have a little windowsill garden.”
Counting family members, the business employees around 20 people, making it a significant employer in the area.
Currently, business hours are 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Beginning in March, the busy season, hours will be Monday through Saturday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mary’s Greenhouse can be contacted at (931) 668-2119.